Big Hero Tron
by IronManSaidPinata
Summary: Another in denial about Tadashi story. Tadashi runs into the building(he's inside longer than in the movie) and decides to go back. However, one of the presenting students left their invention on as they ran out. Their creation: a remade ENCOM laser, fully functioning and ready to transport anything, Tadashi included to the Grid, where a war against CLU2 is raging. Will he make it?
1. Chapter 1

Chapter 1: Alive

Tadashi jumped over a fallen glass display and tried to avoid stepping on the shards scattered about. He raised his arm to cover his mouth and tried to see through the smoke and his tearing eyes. They were burning from both the brightness of the flames as well as the smoke contaminating them. He went into a coughing fit and looked around. He couldn't see Callaghan anywhere, not through the smog that surrounded him.

_Maybe he got out already_, Tadashi reasoned, deciding to turn back and head for the exit, which was not too far away. He needed to get back to Hiro. He knew that he would be heavily chastised and hit on the arm several times, but he would make it out alive. He jumped over the shattered display again and picked up his pace, weaving around fallen ceiling beams and such. He could hear his brother's voice calling for him from outside.

"**TADASHI!**" came the frantic shout. He had nearly reached the door, and he glimpsed a sight of his brother standing at the foot of the staircase and clutching Tadashi's lucky hat tightly, wringing it in his hands and looking like he was trying to decide whether or not to help. Tadashi smiled slightly and coughed again, making for the door.

But then, a loud hum sounded behind him. He turned around to see one of the knocked over displays pointing unknowingly at him, and it was charging up. The sound could barely be heard above the fire, but he still ran like his life depended on it, which maybe it did.

He reached for the door handle!

His hand was around it!

He started to-

**_BOOM!_**

Gone.

"**_TADASHI!_**" Hiro screamed at the building. Finally, getting up enough courage, he dropped Tadashi's hat and ran in after him.

_Dang it you knucklehead! What are you thinking! You're always telling me I'm the one being too dangerous! Why don't you try listening to yourself!_ Hiro shouted in his mind. He thought he glimpsed a human-shaped shadow approaching the door. Suddenly, in a blinding flash, Hiro was thrown backwards. He landed hard on his back next to the hat. He knew it wasn't wise, but he ran toward the fire anyway.

"TADASHI! TADASHI! TADASHI!" he shouted as he ran up the steps. A fireman who had just arrived on the scene grabbed him by the back of his hoodie and pulled him away. Hiro struggled against the man's strong grip. He planted his feet and pulled forward, gritting his teeth and stretching his arms out, grasping for the now-flaming doors of SFIT.

"LET ME GO!" he shouted, "MY BROTHER'S IN THERE!" But the fireman picked him up from the ground and hurried back down the steps, his fellows rushing in with hoses. Hiro kept struggling, flailing his arms and trying to escape, but it was no use. He grunted when the fireman roughly set him back down.

"Listen, I know you said your brother is still inside. If I go now, there may still be a chance that he's okay. If he was standing during the shockwave, he was probably blown back toward the doors. He might be alright," the man explained, his chocolate eyes earnest and concerned. Hiro nodded weakly, briefly wondering if Aunt Cass and his friends had left for the café yet or if they were still here.

"Hiro!"

That answered his question. It was GoGo who reached him first. She didn't even look to him at first, she just stared at the flames pouring out of SFIT and the fireman's retreating form as the brave man ran into the burning building accompanied by a few others dressed appropriately for the heat. Hiro didn't look at her, just stared blankly at the flames.

"Where's Tadashi?" she whispered.

Hiro tried to say something, but his voice caught in his throat. Suddenly, he felt like the world had just crumbled out from beneath his feet and he dropped to his knees, skinning them slightly on the paved stone ground.

He heard his aunt coming up behind him, sobs racking her voice. Tears ran down Hiro's own cheeks, but in the shock of it all, his world began to spin, and his view of the school tilted into a horizontal position until finally, darkness enfolded him.

"HIRO!"

~oOo~

Tadashi's eyes snapped open. The ground felt unnaturally cool to the touch, even the spot beneath him was cool. Neither was it freezing. Jolting from his thoughts, he gasped, then coughed. He held his chest for a moment to catch his breath. When he had gotten his bearings back, he sat back on his legs and looked around. He appeared to be in the middle of nowhere. The area around him was rocky and treacherous, but at the same time, everything seemed smooth. He ran a dirty soot-covered hand through his hair. When had he gotten so dirty?

Oh, right.

He remembered running into the fire. The laser. The explosion. Was he dead? No, this all seemed too scary. Too dystopian. Too real. He got into a standing position and brushed himself off. The edges of his clothes were singed or burnt and his one pant leg was torn slightly. He looked ahead and saw bluish-white lights glowing in the distance. There was something out there.

Whether or not they were civilized was another story.

He took a step forward but suddenly noticed a ring of light surrounding his figure. Wind picked up around him, blowing dust around him. He turned and looked up, his eyes widening at the sight of what looked like some kind of airship hovering several hundred meters above him and descending. Being a good little boy, Tadashi normally would have just submitted when faced with arrest from the authorities, which these guys looked like. However, his instincts told him that this black and orange ship was very, very bad news, so he started to run.

However, a pair of guards came after him, chasing him with a pair of spears. Red-orange light illuminated lines in their dark clothing as they rushed him. One jabbed his side with the red glowing end of the staff and he yelped and fell at the shock that ran through his body. The two men gripped his wrists and hauled him up to his feet which wouldn't support him.

"This program has no disk," one said in a deep, rough, mechanical voice, "another stray." The other nodded and together they dragged him to the ship. _What the heck is a program? _Tadashi thought, upset that he couldn't carry his own weight. A large open corridor, lit up with fluorescent white lights had lowered to the ground, the cabin perhaps. As feeling returned to his legs, he put weight on his feet and walked in step with the two helmeted men; entering the corridor, the first thing Tadashi saw was that the wall was lined with men. No heads turned to look at him, but rather, all of their eyes stared blankly off into the distance or were glued to the floor.

Tadashi froze for half a second before receiving a rough shove from the guard behind him. Not wishing to lose power of his legs again, Tadashi started forward with an annoyed look back over his shoulder. He stepped in front of an empty slot between two men and attempted to walk past it, but the guard's hand pulled him back and pushed him into the spot. A pair of see-through clamps encased his foot like a restrictive boot to prevent him from moving, and while he was distracted, a pair of handcuffs got secured around his wrists. He mentally cursed his mental awareness factor. The cabin began to rise until it jolted, signaling that it was locked in place.

He tried to free himself, but realized it would be of no use. The already loud engine increased its volume as the ship began to rise into the air. Tadashi closed his eyes; while not being afraid of heights per say, quite frankly, he felt that he was already as high up in the dark sky as he wanted to be. Though he still didn't want to be reminded of how high up he was, he was interested in knowing where exactly it was that he was going. He blinked his eyes open, the cool air lashing at them accompanied by more than a few raindrops. He looked to his left to see a man with dead blue eyes in clothes with blue lines of lighting etched into them. Further down the line, he was met with generally the same sight as each of them stared ahead at nothing.

He turned to his left and saw a young man who looked about his age, perhaps slightly older. He wore a black jacket, the edges of which flapped around his chin and torso. His appearance seemed different than the others. Tadashi noticed that the lines in his clothes were a minty green rather than blue like the others. But he also saw his face. The rather indifferent or even resigned look that he wore masked something underneath; something akin to GoGo's bring-it-on-come-at-me-bro attitude. His hair spiked up and filed to a point at the top. He looked like a classic cartoon bad-boy from TV shows that he and Hiro had watched as kids. Tadashi smiled at the memory but it faded as soon as he began to speak to his neighbor.

"Where am I? Where are we going?" he shouted over the wind. The man turned to him; the hints of a smile turning up his lips were quickly crushed and replaced by a mask of indifference.

"Be quiet if you wanna live."

The voice was tinny and strange, if broke halfway through the sentence, making it harder to hear the last two words. However, their meaning was clear. Tadashi decided not to ask questions for the moment and instead focus on what he could learn through context, as well as the small matter of keeping himself alive. He watched where the ship was heading, to a place not far from the city it seemed. It looked like a giant glowing football stadium, floodlights shining back and forth from spots on the area surrounding the open roof. The ship landed and the cabin lowered to the smooth ground. Lights drew lines here in the ground as opposed to where the ship had found him. He swallowed when he saw one of the men down the line start to shake and start muttering a constant phrase under his breath.

"Not the games, not the games, not the games, not the games, not the games…"

Tadashi looked away from the shaking man and back towards the stoic one next to him. Further away, the guards, who had disappeared for the remainder of the trip, reappeared and were making their way down the line, accompanied by more of them from where they had landed. One of them was making his way down the line, stopping in front of every prisoner and lowering his head before raising his head as if scanning his face. The first one he told "Rectify" after he had finished scanning. It was the same for the next two, but then he reached the man standing next to him and Tadashi heard a whirring and then finally, a harsh utterance of the word "Games."

The man moved on to Tadashi, scanning his face up and down. Tadashi opened his mouth to say something, though he wasn't exactly sure what he planned to say; but the guard sharply said, "Games," and moved on. Tadashi shut his mouth after a second and then waited as a pair of the guards came and grabbed his shoulders, hauling him forward off of the landing pad and toward the stadium. They released him after a moment, but he felt something clamp around his feet again. He looked down to see the same clear binders encasing his feet once again. He looked up to see himself between the man he was standing next to previously and three others. The man was now wearing a somewhat less than indifferent and more of a semi-defiant sneer on his features. Tadashi looked the other way and saw looks of determination, resignation, or hopelessness on the faces of the other men standing next to him.

Then the world dropped away.

It took Tadashi a moment to realize that he wasn't falling. Rather, he was being lowered at high speed to someplace below ground. It made him sick to look at the walls as they flew by around him, checked by the occasional light. He pressed his lips into a thin line and waited for the nausea to pass.

After what seemed like forever, the walls around him slowed before suddenly, he was in a sizable room with the bare minimum of lights giving it just the bare minimum of illumination. He shook his head, the wavy feeling in his stomach leaving him and he gave a shuddery breath. He looked around for a moment before attempting to jerk his feet out of the binders.

A sliding sound came from behind him.

Tadashi twisted his head in time to see a tall woman in high heels that nearly matched Honey Lemon's as she strode toward him. Her stark white hair was pulled up in a _very_ tight bun that looked like it probably hurt. He heard more footsteps and didn't have to turn to know that there were more coming toward him from other directions. He looked around at the small group of five women who had surrounded him and his eyes flicked to each of them, their appearances different and the same all at once.

Then, each of them raised their forefingers in the air and a small light that looked like white fire went on and they dragged them down his body. He swallowed and felt his ears and face burning.

"Uhm..." he stuttered. Nothing would come out in his flustered state. This was beyond weird. If this was a dream, something must have hit him on the head before he had gotten knocked out, because he had never dreamt of stuff like this happening.

Once they had him stripped to his underpants, they threw his now shredded clothes into a chute where they were sucked up and disappeared. He swallowed uncomfortably again and shifted, wondering if they were playing a joke on him. At least until a black substance started to crawl its way like a virus across his skin. He recoiled at the sight of the opaque black goo as it wound its way up his body, down his legs, and over his shoulders. It wrapped itself around his arms until it stopped and hardened. The material felt like a cross between latex and leather; tight but not restrictive. The women returned, each carrying a piece of armor, which they attached rather robotically to his person. In turn, each piece extended out and wrapped itself around whatever it attached to. He looked at his now armored arms and watched as blue lights flickered on and he flexed his fingers, three of which covered in the black material, two with the lighting running down them.

_Cool_, he thought, looking up to see two of the women from before. Another had walked off to a small pedestal that sat about 15 yards from the platform where he was stationed. A mechanical female voice started to speak:

"Attention Program, you will receive an identity disk. Everything you do or learn will be imprinted on this disk. "

The woman walked back toward him, robotic in her six inch heels, and passed the "identity disk" to one of the women next to her.

"If you lose your disk or fail to follow commands, you will be subject to immediate derezolution."

The second woman walked behind him and pressed the disk to his back, stuck firmly between his shoulder blades on some kind of dock. _Almost like a USB drive_, he thought. She twisted it into place and he jolted, blue pixels shining in his eyes for a moment before he blinked them away.

The woman with white hair gave a slightly indifferent quarter-smile and said, "Mirroring complete, disc activated and synchronized. Proceed to games."

Tadashi quirked an eyebrow, he wasn't getting a good feeling about these games. "Games?" he asked, looking after the woman's departing form. They all disappeared until it was just her and him. He looked at her slightly expectantly before he asked, "What am I supposed to do?"

Her only reply was a half smile and one word.

"Survive."

Tadashi swallowed and waited a moment before noticing that the binders around his feet had unfolded and he was free to move. He took a step back before he heard the sound of the door ahead of him opening to reveal nothing but bright light. He shielded his eyes with his arm, half wondering if this was just a mindless dream on the way to heaven. He then put one foot in front of the other, one step at a time to finally reach the door.

_Whatever this is, it can't be good_, he thought.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2 - Survival

Tadashi had walked through some kind of long hallway until he found another doorway which opened into a dark room, with just a bench on the far wall. As soon as he stepped inside, he heard the door slide shut behind him and he immediately set to work trying to let himself out, disliking the confinement. He felt the pod, or cell, however one looked at it, move away from where he had come from and he found himself in the middle of a black abyss. Still, looking out, he could see small lines of light, some farther away than others, moving around in the dark.

He suddenly had the sensation of rising upwards. He planted his feet, grateful that there was no light to see by so he could observe the speed he was traveling at. The dull sounds of music reached his ears and he looked up, music growing louder as the small cell rose. Suddenly, the ceiling opened up above him and the music became deafening. Tadashi gritted his teeth, wanting to cover his ears, but too interested in his surroundings to care as much as he should. His ramblings to Hiro about protecting his ears by not blaring his music through his headphones briefly ran through his head, before he registered the cheering crowd.

Hundreds, no thousands, of wild people were in the stands lining the stadium and jumping up and down like five-year-olds on coffee. He looked around to find that he was in a ring of cells that was one of six entering the stadium. A huge black and orange ship hovered into view, coming to a stop above the entire stadium.

"Welcome to the Coliseum. All combatants prepare for Disc Wars," a voice not unlike the one from the armory rang out, accompanied by some kind of 8-bit music mix. Disc Wars? This definitely wasn't good. He swallowed and then tried to get his bearings, wondering what the Disc Wars included. He noticed his pod break away from the group and join another one by way of a small glass-like container that was somewhat larger than the previous one. He stepped out of the cell and into the larger area, across from a man with short black hair that was shaved into lines. He reached back and pulled his disc from between his shoulders. It lit up a white-hot blue and seemed to vibrate like a heat wave.

Tadashi gulped and took a step and a half back toward the cell. However, his back hit the wall and he pressed himself to it, like a hunted animal. The man showed no fear; nor remorse for what he was about to do. He pulled his arm back and flung the disc at Tadashi, who dodge away just in time. The disk swung around, forcing Tadashi to dodge yet again as it zoomed back to its master. The other combatant spun in a circle and then hurled the disk again. Tadashi dropped to the floor, deciding to take action. He reached onto his back and pulled his own disc from the dock on his back and held it up in front of his face.

_Now how does one activate this thing?_ He wondered. As if on cue, the disc's edge lit up the white blue, and thanks to the finger strips, he didn't cut or burn any fingers. He felt a helmet unfold from his neck to cover his head and face with a piece of glass that he saw through easily. The other's disc pinged against the wall behind him and he suddenly found himself being rushed by his opponent. Using a jump pad, he leapt up into the air and dropped down, grabbing his disc mid jump, and intending to slam it down on Tadashi. In a split second reflex, Tadashi smashed his disc onto the floor, and a hexagon shaped piece of it shattered in front of him, just wide enough for his opponent to fall through. Tadashi extended his hand out to him, but he was too late. He felt his stomach lurch when he saw the man's body hit the ceiling of another combat ring below and shatter into billions of tiny blue pixels which clattered off the edges of the ring and down into the black abyss below.

"Combatant 11, victory. Combatant 6, derezolution"

The crowd around him went nuts, some were cheering as if they had just found their new star player, while others were booing just as enthusiastically. Tadashi got to his feet from his kneeling position shakily and moved to observe his surroundings while he had the chance. He had won. He had beaten his opponent at great cost. But what did he get in return?

His life?

He looked around, noticing that the ring looked similar to a hockey rink with circles and lines dictating things that he didn't know. And there were jump pads, each platform separated by an opening in the floor that one would not be able to cross without using a jump pad or some kind of boost. All in all, it looked like the other side of a screen while playing an intense round of Super Smash Brothers.

Below him, another pair of combatants were really laying it out on each other, until one of them, one with green lines traveling down his suit, hurled his disc around at breakneck speed before the other man had time to compensate. The green-rimmed disc smashed through the blue combatant and caused him to disintegrate. He watched the ring move out from under him for a moment before he realized that his own compartment was moving and that it was going to connect to another combatant's cell.

"Combatant 15, victory. Combatant 22, derezolution. Round 1 complete, initiating Round 2."

Tadashi's pod locked onto another's. He looked up to see a man with orange lighting and tubes extending out from an all black helmet standing a few paces from the edge. Tadashi swallowed again.

Let the games begin.

~oOo~

(Timeskip because there's too many battles I'd have to write)

Tadashi was out of breath and tired, a few small cuts garnishing his neck, chin, and arms, as well as a burn on his calf from when he had attempted to slide under his opponent and taken a bad angle. He was grateful that it was nothing life threatening, which was more than he could say for the combatants that had faced him.

"Combatant 11, victory. Combatant 18, derezolution."

The 8-bit level change music chimed again, however it was longer and sounded more triumphant.

"Disc Wars completed. Congratulations Combatants 4, 8, 11, 15, and 18, you will be moved on to the next set."

The crowd cheered wildly and five huge screens rose out of the walls of the coliseum. Each one showed the face of one champion. Tadashi started slightly and the sight of his face on the monitor, noting that his chin was bleeding slightly. He swiped it away under the pretense that he was wiping his nose off on his sleeve. He looked over and noticed that the holding pod he had come in was attaching to the back wall of his ring. He walked toward it, placing his disc on his back and trying to catch his breath. Interestingly, he didn't feel hot and sweaty like he knew he should. Rather, he felt just like he did when he had arrived, perhaps little more than an hour ago. It seemed that temperature here was a moot point.

The doors to the pod shut behind him and he lay down on the bench, folding into a chair position on his back with his feet pressed against the wall and stared up at the black sky. Raindrops pelted down onto the roof. He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his palms and groaned.

"This has got to be some kind of weird coma dream," he grumbled, running his hands through his messy black hair. He looked over at the four other surviving combatants, one paced around his cell, waving his hands around in the air in wild gesticulation as if he were berating himself for something. Others simply sat on the benches provided for them, holding their heads in their hands. One housed next to Tadashi looked like he was crying. Tadashi noticed that the crowds were milling out of the arena and an announcement was heard.

"Programs, please enjoy the micro-cycle intermission between games. At the sound of the first alarm, please return to your seats for the next set. Combatants, please take rest during the micro-cycle intermission. Programs please enjoy…"

The voice went on about five times, making it hard for Tadashi to follow the order and get rest. The other "programs" took advantage of the respite by lying down on their benches and seeming to fall asleep. A timer screed appeared and Tadashi watched as the numbers counted down. He only had an hour until the first alarm. He took stock of his possible opponents, noting that none of them wore black and orange and were instead, blue, green, or purple.

He rolled onto his side and curled into a fetal position, hugging himself and screwing his eyes shut, hoping that when he woke up, everything would be back to normal.

A/N: Please read and review. This is purely zonk from my imagination and serious, serious coffee overload. I am both a BH6 fan and a TRON junkie (TRONski) They could have made Legacy way better, but I was addicted the moment I saw it in theaters, while my siblings were disappointed beyond belief.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3 – Rescue

Something blared in Tadashi's ear and he blinked his eyes open and extended his arm to wave it about, searching for his pesky alarm. The blaring continued as he kept searching. His eyes snapped open entirely as he caught sight of his reflection in the glass. The white-blue lines shining on his body. He jumped up into a sitting position and held his head as a dizzy spell hit him, making his sight darken. He looked around to see the other combatants stretching and preparing for the next round as the crowd began to file into the stadium bleachers.

Tadashi too got up and stretched his arms out, preparing for whatever was supposed to happen next. He was disappointed that he hadn't woken up from the dream like he hoped he would, but he figured it might be a recurring thing. He shook his head. Still, it felt too real. For a second he briefly wondered if the Twilight Zone was real. The thought made him shudder, but he shook it off.

What looked to be about five minutes or so on the timer were left so he put himself into getting his head together and being ready for what was coming. Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted the huge orange and black ship deploy a smaller ship, much like the one that had picked up Tadashi when he had awoken in this strange world. It lowered and landed on the previously non-existent ground. A Cartesian grid had appeared in thin white lines as Tadashi felt himself lowering. A group of five red programs walked out in a formation. Tadashi swallowed as his pod rotated so the entrance faced out and the four other pods attached to his side so he was in the center. His nerves had been lost for a time during the Disc Wars, but they were steadily returning and causing his stomach to do back-flips without him.

When the pod doors opened, each program took a moment to size each other up until Tadashi heard a familiar voice.

"Hey!"

It was the man from the ship. He was looking at Tadashi with a grin on his face. He strode over, his index finger pointing at Tadashi, making him swallow and take a partial step backwards.

"You were on the Recognizer. Glad you made it through the disc battles-" he trailed off squinting at Tadashi, or rather the cut on Tadashi's face. "Is that…?" he quickly pulled Tadashi to the side and looked at him. It felt strange being scrutinized by someone who wasn't even taller than him. The man's pale green eyes met his, a sense of awe and urgency in them. Then a smile.

"You're a User," he said quietly, his lips turning up even further. Tadashi quirked an eyebrow at him, wondering about this sudden change of attitude.

"Grid is live, initiate Light Cycle Battle," the mechanical voice chimed. Tadashi watched as the five men in black and orange ran off in one direction for about ten or eleven yards before flinging themselves into the air. Astonishment took over his features as an orange image rendered beneath them and then it solidified into black bikes with red lighting underneath. The bikers shot off in the same formation they had walked in and zoomed around a turn as the area suddenly gained dimensions, ramps and hills as well as turnpikes made it into the variable stunt playground.

"Stick close to me User, and you'll make it out of this," his companion said, clapping him on the shoulder as a pedestal rose out of the ground, a selection of five batons with lines and a circle in the center running down it. His new friend turned around and called, "Just do what we do!" Then he turned and ran off, flanked by the others, two men and a woman. Each of them jumped and snapped apart their baton, causing a blue, green, or purple bike forming under them as they shot off, a hole in the center. Tadashi swallowed.

_How different can it be from the scooter?_ He thought before following their lead and running before jumping, snapping apart the baton in his hands, and then he closed his eyes, listening to the clicking and whirring of metal as the bike formed beneath him. He opened them just in time to feel the bike slam back to the ground, and he revved the engine for a moment and accidentally made it perform a wheelie before he caught up to his group and feel into formation in the center. He saw the other group had tails of light trailing out behind their bikes, marking where they had been.

Tadashi's looked to his side as the person next to him pushed a button on the handlebars and a beam of almost liquid-like energy shot out behind his bike. Tadashi searched around for the same button, finding it at last and activating the light beam. He noticed that he was suddenly alone, the others having peeled off from beside him.

And he was headed for a wall.

He quickly turned, the bike more temperamental than what he was used to, but not overall difficult to handle. At least, that's what he had thought until something rammed his side. He gasped and looked over, seeing the dark helmet of an opponent facing him. He looked forward and saw that if he was careful, he could lead him into the ramp zone. He took the chance, accelerating until he was ahead of the other player, then he dropped out of sight down a ramp.

Tadashi zoomed up another ramp, flying over his opponent and swerved when faced with one of his own teammates on a collision course. He didn't realize at first that he had cut in front of his opponent, causing the man to crash into the light beam left behind, the bike shattering in a spray of red-orange pixels that looked almost watery. The man left behind, stood vulnerable in the middle of the field, but not seconds later, another bike came flying off of a ramp, and seemingly accidentally crushed him as it landed.

Tadashi couldn't look, so he focused on driving until he saw one of his teammates riding up the turnpike, one of their opponents coming down. The opposing man seemed to fiddle with something on his bike for a second before they met and then Tadashi heard his teammate scream before the bike exploded, sending a small shockwave ricocheting across the field. He squeezed his eyes shut and just focused on keeping out of everyone's way while they duked it out. Occasionally, he would start to get tailed by one of his opponents, but a familiar looking green bike would jump in and cut off his pursuer.

Eventually, all but the green bike had been destroyed, and said green bike was looking like it was about to get gangked by the remaining two opponents. Tadashi altered his course, curving down onto a ramp and heading over to the other player.

"Hey!"

"Oh, it's you. Where've you been?"

"I'm the only player left, and I've been trying to keep those guys off my tail!"

"Well, follow me then, we only have to hold out for a few more minutes!"

"What?" Tadashi shouted, but his question was thrown to the wind as his new partner accelerated and seemed to be trying to get another one of the surviving team members to come after him. Tadashi failed to see how this was holding out, but a moment later, he developed a small plan.

Ignoring his sense of caution, he veered away and took a ramp to an upper level, acting like he wasn't doing anything in particular. As soon as his teammate had the other's attention, the chase was on. Tadashi keeping a close eye on the pair as they raced side by side, both vying for the lead. At last, his buddy, seeing Tadashi, pulled back. While the orange rider's attention was taken, Tadashi accelerated and whizzed in front of him, his light trail creating a barrier. Their opponent slammed into the light wall and shattered along with his bike.

Tadashi's stomach did another flip, but his partner was motioning for him to zero in on the last member of the other team, the leader. Tadashi gave a nod and followed next to his partner. However, instead of jumping onto either side of their opponent, they remained together, Tadashi's friend herding him away from the only other combatant left and more toward the opposite wall. They climbed a ramp and then shot toward the wall. It took a moment, but both managed to stop and derezz their light cycles.

Tadashi didn't have time to voice his question about why they were simply standing around and doing nothing as the wall they were standing near blasted open, a jagged hole created. A small car with white-blue lighting screeched to a halt and the side door flipped open, revealing a person sitting at the wheel. The other man standing across from Tadashi looked relieved.

"Good, our ride's here. C'mon!" the man shouted hurrying to the car. Tadashi gulped, unsure of what to do. He could get in the car and go with these people, or he could stay and finish the game. He knew which one sounded more appealing, but couldn't figure out which would serve him better in the long run.

"Get. In."

Tadashi looked at the program sitting in the driver's seat. They were looking past him, however, and Tadashi heard the engine of the final player nearing. Quickly he sprang into action, hoping his indecision wouldn't cause any trouble. He jumped into the small three-wheel car and the door shut behind him. He felt something wrap around his torso and looked down to see a seatbelt like one would wear in a helicopter locking him in place. The engine on the little car revved and it sped back toward the hole that its driver had created, wheels squealing on the ground. He screwed his eyes shut and nearly screamed when a gap appeared and the car leapt from the ground.

He waited for the fall, but it never came. Instead, they landed with a thud and kept going. Tadashi released the breath he'd been holding and made to look out the back window. However, he jumped when he was met with a view of his partner. The man grinned widely at him and voiced an answer to his thoughts.

"Don't worry, they can't follow us out here. Their bikes aren't made for off-Grid travel, they'll malfunction on this terrain," he told him, eyes filled with the thrill of the chase as he looked out the windshield. "My name's Karthago. Friends call me Karth," he said, extending his hand and sending Tadashi an open-mouthed grin.

"Tadashi," he replied, bewildered. Karth nodded and hit the driver playfully on the shoulder, causing them to swerve slightly. "You too. Say hello." The driver let go of the steering wheel with one hand and raised it to the base of their skull. The helmet clicked for a moment before it folded away into her collar. Tadashi's jaw almost dropped.

"My name's Mirage. Mira for short," she said, extending her hand to him before putting her eyes back on the road. She was pretty to say the least. Her hair was cropped short, probably to fit inside the black helmet and her side bangs were held back by a pair of clips that kept the shiny black strands out of her eyes while she drove. After he shook her hand, she withdrew it and gripped the steering wheel as the car began a collision course with a rock. After a minute of careful steering, she asked, "Why do we have a passenger, Karth?"

Karth laughed and replied, "He's a User Mira. If you had a moment to take a close look at his circuits, you'd see they're white not blue, and he was injured during the Disc Wars so I saw him bleed. Trust me Mira." The program in the driver's seat gave him a wry look, but didn't press the topic. Instead she merely shook her head and mumbled something about getting answers later.

The rest of the drive was silent, making Tadashi even more nervous.

A/N: Read and Review. Short chapter, fast update. I had already started working on this before I submitted the last chapter, so no, this was not as rushed as one might think, though there may be some errors. I don't have a beta reader. As before, this is still purely zonk from my imagination. OTL


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